


A Flowery Interlude

by GalaxyBrownies



Series: The Story of UNDERTALE [4]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Flowey - Freeform, Flowey the Flower - Freeform, Resets, Sad boi, Time Fuckery, Time Shenanigans, but not really sad cause he’s SOULless, continuation of TSoU, idk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 05:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14348766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyBrownies/pseuds/GalaxyBrownies
Summary: Asriel wakes up. But it isn’t the same.





	A Flowery Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place between Percival and Juno and Haven! Comment if you like it!
> 
>  
> 
> My Tumblr

Darkness.

It’s so incredibly dark.

Who was he?

 

He raises his head.

Too dark to see.

Feels…

 

Empty.

 

Fire burns from within him, moving him, urging him. He felt a command, a _will_ , compelling him to do something, anything.

Who was he?

A name appears in his mind, framed perfectly in the darkness.

 

**A S R I E L**

 

But… it didn’t _feel_ right. Asriel didn’t feel right. Something was wrong, a dark, twisting feeling from within, framed by that _burning_ feeling, the feeling that flowed through him. It quickly faded to a strong warmth, as if noticing his discomfort.

Asriel could feel that something wasn’t right. His existence was _wrong_ somehow. He wished he remembered anything. He wished he remembered his life. He was Asriel, but who _was_ he?

He doesn’t feel anything besides the innate feeling of _wrongness_ , just a buzzing, constant numbness that consumes his entire being. That wrongness screams again, saying that _this wasn’t right_ , but it wasn’t like Asriel could do much about it.

 

Chara.

 

He thinks he knew a Chara once. He isn’t sure who or what this person is, but he knows they exist. Or existed? He honestly isn’t sure, and if he were able to be scared, he would be frightened at that.

He sits in the darkness for a while.

 

 

 

There’s a spot of light, far, far away. Asriel doesn’t know what it is, but he’s had enough of this endless, crushing black, that holds on to him and doesn’t want to let go. He reaches out with hands that aren’t hands, and grabs hold of the light.

 

 

He opens his eyes in his father’s garden. Bright light filters in through the windows on the walls, stinging eyes that have not once seen anything. Where is everyone? Where is… Chara? He thinks he can remember Chara now. Chara was green and yellow and brown and _different_. Chara was gone.

Asriel was ~~scared~~ ~~worried~~ _curious_. He needed to know where the others were. He needed to find…

Mom? Dad? He feels the faintest memory of them on his mind, foggy as it is. Perhaps he should call out?

He looks down at his body for the first time since waking and recoils at what he sees. Well, more like what he _doesn’t_ see. What should be a fuzzy white body clothed in green and yellow is gone. There’s just… a green cylindrical _thing_. What? He sees more green cylindrical things on the ground, not his, but attached to yellow flowers. Buttercups.

Did that mean?

Man, just his luck. Asriel would cheat death, but _of course_ he would come back as a _flower_. A flower!

But how could this be?

His parents must miss him. The memories are returning, he can remember much about his old life now. About _Asriel’s_ old life. He wasn’t really Asriel anymore, was he?

Asriel would do for now, he supposed. He’s never been anything else. Asriel looks around the room, finally deciding to try his luck.

“M-Mom?” His voice croaks out, surprising him. It sounded so much _different_ from before! It was high and shrill and he wasn’t sure that he liked it all too much. He was sure that he was supposed to be feeling something, some emotion, but none sprung up to take the place. “D-Dad?”

Nothing. He calls again. If he won’t feel anything, maybe he could help _them_ to? They must miss him. Probably.

“Mom! Dad!” The noise rings out to empty ears. Maybe it’s nighttime? The light in this room never turned out, so that could well be a possibility. There were no clocks in here.

“Mom! Dad!”

Asriel sat there, for what must have been _hours_ , calling for his parents, unable to actually feel the need to see them.

 

But nobody came.

 

Where was everyone? Maybe he could go look? But how would he move, he was just a flower, after all?

He gives an experimental wiggle. Nothing. He tries a little harder. _Still_ nothing. That burning feeling inside him roars up, urging him to Find. A. Way. It wouldn’t leave him alone until he reached his goal. He felt… 

He felt…

Determined.

With a great effort, he ducks below the ground. _Now_ he was getting somewhere! He would figure out this whole ‘being a flower’ thing as he went. Funny, he knew if he were Asriel, not a flower, that this situation would greatly upset him. He’d probably have already drowned in his tears. But he wasn’t feeling anything. Not sad, not angry, not even the simple feeling of missing your parent. He felt nothing besides the ever growing itch of curiosity. He _needed_ to see how they would react to him. The buzzing numbness grows ever so slightly.

So, now he was underground. Well, _more_ underground than before. He giggles a little at his unintentional joke. Great, at least _that_ was still working. Curiosity and humor.

But how to move? He leans forward a little, a difficult venture in the tight packed soil, or so it _should_ be, but the soil moves aside easily, as if it weren’t there at all. He wonders why that is. Magic, he supposed. Everything was magic down here. Much different to the brief trip outside the Barrier he was now remembering.

He looks for his parents (or who used to be his parents), somehow knowing exactly where he was going to pop up before he actually did. More magic, he guessed. 

He finally finds his father, King Asgore, in the kitchen, crying over a pie recipe. If he could feel sympathetic, he was sure he would, but he couldn’t so he doesn’t.

He doesn’t think his father should be bothered right now. 

From snooping around the house, he learns what he had suspected, seeing Asgore crying over a pie recipe.

Mom was gone. Not gone in the sense that she’d died, but gone enough to warrant the tears from his father. When had she left? How long had he been dead?

He wanted to find out.

He started looking.

 

 

He finds her tending a patch of buttercups in the spot Chara had fallen. Chara… was she? He thinks he can _almost_ sense it, some semblance of Chara’s SOUL, just under these flowers. This was her grave.

Asriel wonders what his parents had sprinkled his dust on. He had never grown very overly attached to any material possessions. They had probably just scattered it among his toys and mourned him like that.

Asriel decides to try his luck.

“Mom?”

His shrill voice makes Toriel jump, startled. She turns to him, paw over her chest.

“Oh! Hello, little flower! Are you lost?” Toriel looks at him with a curious look. She’s never seen anything like him, Asriel knows. Flower monsters don’t exist.

Asriel takes a breath. “Mom… it’s- it’s me! Asriel!”

Toriel’s eyes widen a fraction, before tears fill them and she turns back to the flowers.

“Asriel is dead.” Her voice rings out in the patch of flowers, clear and hollow. “I do not know what joke you are attempting to play, but it is not funny in the slightest.”

Asriel blinks. “It’s not- it’s not a joke, Mom!” He wracks his head to think of a way to prove it to her. “I- I remember what Dad got me the Gyftmas before I died!”

Toriel looks distraught, but looks at him expectantly.

“It was those lockets! I got a human SOUL- shaped one and Ch-Chara got a monster SOUL- shaped one. Y-you made Papyrus a striped sweater… Chara got a gardening knife from you.”

There was no way anyone outside of the people in the room would know those specifics, and Toriel knew it.

“A-Asriel?” Toriel places two paws over her mouth, sobbing earnestly. “H-how could this be?!”

Asriel looks down at himself, not sure of that himself.

“I have no idea,” he deadpans.

Toriel sobs for a moment, eyes trained on Asriel like he might disappear any second. After the sobs die down, she walks over to him hesitantly, and touches a petal lightly.

“I do not know how this is possible, but this is a blessing! Come, now. Let us go home.” Toriel smiles at him warmly, tears still running tracks down her cheeks.

The two go to the house in the Ruins, Asriel in a pot balanced on Toriel’s hip. Toriel places him momentarily in the bedroom he had stayed with Chara in whenever they visited the house. He wondered why there were no orphans here, this used to be an orphanage. Maybe they were all adopted? How many years had it been?

If he could feel any semblance of sadness, he was sure he’d be feeling it in this room. It was cold, and dark, and empty, so different from when Chara and he had been here. There was still only one bed. He supposed there hadn’t been many orphans to begin with (just Undyne and a couple others), so they hadn’t needed much more. There were two other bedrooms, after all.

Mom comes back after a little while, bearing pie. She sits with him and chats for awhile about what he missed when he was dead.

She had left Asgore, that much he knew. Asgore wanted to collect human SOULs. Asriel knew that the old him would have been horrified at that, but it just strikes him as an interesting development. 

Four more humans had fallen so far. They hadn’t been able to salvage Chara’s SOUL (not that they’d have used it if they’d been able to), so they’d had to start from square one. They just needed three more, then?

They stay like this, talking and reminiscing (more on Toriel’s end than Asriel’s) until it’s time for Toriel to go to bed. Asriel doesn’t feel tired in the slightest. Maybe he didn’t need to sleep.

“Goodnight, Asriel. I… love you.” Toriel smiles at Asriel as she turns off the bedroom light, departing for her own room.

Asriel is left in darkness to ponder all the events of the day. Toriel’s last words to him troubled him slightly. He knew how much she loved him, knew it innately, yet… he didn’t feel anything. No amount of love or caring or sympathy flowed throughout him. He just felt hollow. 

Maybe he didn’t have a SOUL.

He probably didn’t have a SOUL.

But if he didn’t have a SOUL, then how could he ever feel love again? How could he feel _any_ emotion, ever again? Was living worth it if it was like _this_ , this endless numbing that was sometimes perforated by an itching burning somewhere inside him? Was life meaningful if he couldn’t return the love of his friends and family?

Was living worth the effort?

After hours of thinking, he decides that, no, it isn’t.

 

He rocks his little body back and forth, shimmying the pot back and forth on the desk he’s placed on. After a couple minutes of these efforts, it finally topples over with a resounding crash, breaking open on the ground. He cringes, waiting for Toriel to come storming in to stop him, but she never does. 

Well, he didn’t think this through. Could he even go through the ground here?

Duh, of course he could, he had in Asgore’s house. Silly him. He disappears into the floorboards, once again underground. At least he wouldn’t be around to see Toriel’s face when she noticed he was gone. Not that he would _care_ , really, but with no SOUL, he suspected it would’ve much easier to fall to such corruption, to learn to enjoy causing pain to others. He no longer had compassion.

He travels through the ground, finally popping up in the hot atmosphere of Hotland. It was strange, he told himself once again. Here he was, trying to kill himself, and he didn’t feel a thing. Which was why he had to die.

He peers over the edge of a cliff, getting a good look at the lava bubbling hundreds of feet below him. That would do. He takes a deep breath. In, and out. He didn’t know if this body could feel any pain. He didn’t know if he’d care. The burning feeling in him, Determination, he knows, rises to a crescendo, screaming at him to _do it_.

 

He throws himself over the edge.

This really is a long drop.

 

On the way down, he comes to an epiphany. If he had no SOUL… then how could he die?! Would he simply disappear from this world, never to be seen again?

He realizes what death would really mean for him. Back to that endless, endless black, that grabbed you and never let go.

Never never never never never let go never never let never go let ne _ver goNever never n_ ever never never let go never never let never go let never go ~~Never never never~~ never never let go never never let never go let never go

 

He didn’t want to die.

He lands in the burning, burning lava, grinning almost sadistically as it chars him, burns his body away. He couldn’t feel a thing, just as suspected. The burning of the lava was matched only by the burning in his chest, now marching a new beat.

Instead of the chant to die, it was thrumming a solid, sustained call to _live._

_Live_

_Live_

_Live_

Everything fades to black as Asriel dies, again.

He’s back in the black, the endless, endless black. But the thrumming of burning determination continues. _Live, live, live_. Maybe it didn’t matter if he couldn’t feel. Maybe it didn’t matter if he was SOULless. Maybe he could just _live_.

Two options appear in front of him, dazzling, almost blinding in the dark dArknESs dark.

**R E S E T**

**C O N T I N U E**

He doesn’t know what they mean. He just knows they’re a way out. A way out of this dark blackness that never stops and it claws at him and never lets go and

He selects an option.

 

And wakes up in his father’s garden.

 

——

 

Asriel knows what he can do.

Asriel plays with what he can do.

Asriel meets his mother again, leaves her again.

He talks to his father, and leaves him, over and over.

He befriends everyone.

 

Eventually, when the whispers and the grabbing of the dark and his lack of SOUL and the burning feeling get too much, too pleading 

He kills everyone.

 

He repeats. Over. And over. And over.

 

Until he has accidentally allowed enough time to pass that two humans fall. He isn’t sure how long he’s been doing this. For the others, the ones that can’t remember, it’s been around a year. For him… so much more time.

New playthings. Fun.

After all, what harm could he possibly be doing if he just resets, turns back time to make sure it never happened in the first place? It was all in the name of fun. And he had no pesky emotions to hold him back, no hang ups. It was perfect.

So he plays with the humans. He meets them, he guides them, he kills them, he befriends them, he leads them to others so _they_ can kill them. He doesn’t care.

Until, finally, he lets it end. It was getting boring, anyway. He leads the yellow one, Juno, he thinks, to the King, on some stupid quest to kill him. It wouldn’t work, he knew. He’d already done it half a dozen times. That green one was _always_ captured.

And now, with no more humans to play with, he bides his time. There’s still so much to do!

He thinks he needs a new name. He isn’t Asriel, not really. Asriel was soft and stupid and weak, and that wasn’t really who he was anymore, was he?

After another round of befriending everyone, he talks to his father. He hadn’t told Asgore who he was this time.

“What would you name me, if you had to?” He asks tentatively, trying to emulate the emotion he knew was expected of him. Asgore thinks on this for a moment, humming in thought.

“Flowey the Flower!” He decides, bumbling around his garden. ~~Asriel~~ wants to laugh. What a stupid name!

But when Asgore is strung up from his vines, when he’s strangled until his dust scatters in his precious flowers, Flowey knows it’s a perfect name. Simple, easy to remember.

So, Flowey he is.

 

Flowey the Flower.

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr


End file.
